CHERUB: The Fall - Robert Muchamore Page 0,5

his tricks.’

Rat looked at her uncertainly. ‘Even he wouldn’t stoop that low.’

‘It’s Mr Large,’ Lauren muttered. ‘He’ll do anything, especially to me. He hates my guts.’

Large now lay at the side of the dirt road, his legs twitching as he fought for breath.

‘You stay here if you want,’ Rat said. ‘It looks serious.’

As soon as Rat ran out of the trees, Large gave a desperate scream for help, which finally convinced Lauren that he wasn’t play acting.

‘Are you OK?’ Rat said nervously, as he leaned over Mr Large.

Large’s face was white and cold sweat bristled all over his forehead. ‘Do I damn well look OK?’

Lauren arrived a few paces behind Rat and did a better job of remembering her first-aid training. ‘Have you got pains down your arms or in your chest?’

‘Both,’ Large slurred as Lauren undid his belt and loosened his collar.

‘He’s clammy all over,’ Rat said. ‘Is it a heart attack?’

‘He’s got all the symptoms,’ Lauren nodded.

The kids hadn’t been allowed to bring their mobiles on the training exercise.

‘Sir, I need your phone,’ Lauren said.

Large managed to briefly point at his trouser pocket before retching violently and erupting into another spasm.

Lauren flipped the mobile open, staring briefly at the wallpaper image of Large’s beloved Rottweilers before dialling the CHERUB campus emergency number. She held the phone up to her ear waiting for a connection, but all she heard was a metallic bing-bong sound.

No Service. Please Try Later.

Lauren gave Rat a spooked look. ‘There’s no signal out here,’ she said anxiously. ‘Arif’s gone off with the truck. We’ll have to figure out some way of getting him to the hospital ourselves.’

3. NUMB

The six-kilometre run and the birthday messages boosted James’ mood, but it sank as soon as he sighted the apartment complex that counted for home.

The Brezhnev Apartments were a three-storey block that had been built for Aero City’s elite during the communist era. It was now owned by an elderly relative of Denis Obidin, who collected the rent but spent little of it on keeping the building in shape.

The interior walls were decorated with dangling wallpaper and clumps of mildew, the boiler room in the basement only provided warmth and hot water when it fancied and the prefabricated sections from which the apartments were constructed were badly cracked and didn’t seem up to a strong sneeze, let alone a Russian winter.

Despite this, the small community of foreigners who worked in Aero City all resided here and stumped up the extortionate rent because it was protected by Vladimir Obidin’s best police officers.

Any foreigner brave enough to set up home elsewhere could expect to find their valuables stolen if they were lucky, whilst the unlucky found themselves brutally mugged or escorted to one of the city’s two cash machines to make a withdrawal at knifepoint. When the victims complained to the police, they were greeted with indifference and advised to move back into Mr Obidin’s apartment block.

Damp hung in the air as James stepped through the entrance. Most of the lighting tubes were either burned out or flickering. After squelching up four flights on damp carpet, James cut down a short corridor and put his key in the door of apartment 2-17.

The interior was slightly more accommodating than the public spaces. There was a modern kitchen and bathroom fitted by a previous tenant and some half decent furniture. But no amount of airing quelled the damp that penetrated every fibre of the building.

‘Honey, I’m home,’ James yelled, as he slammed the front door and dumped his backpack on the hallway carpet.

He put his head around a bedroom door, where his fake aunt and uncle stood in their underwear. Cheap body spray hung in the air and the smart clothes laid out over the double bed showed that they were getting ready for an evening out.

‘Ooops,’ James gasped, embarrassed as he sighted the giant knickers stretched over Auntie Isla’s cellulite-pitted bum.

Uncle Boris stood buttoning up his shirt. He was in his forties, a birdlike figure who stank of small brown cigars. He wore a pair of aviator-style glasses with a dark orange tint, even on the gloomiest Russian days.

‘Come on in, James,’ Isla smiled. ‘Don’t be shy. How did it go at the compound?’

‘I didn’t get the two bugs in,’ James said, as he tried not to see too much of the decrepit bodies standing in front of him. ‘Vladimir came in and chucked me out before I had the chance to go in the kitchen. But all the others are